This publication proposes a brand new thought concerning the date and situations of the composition of the "Pentateuch". The critical thesis of this ebook is that the Hebrew "Pentateuch" was once composed in its entirety approximately 273-272 BCE through Jewish students at Alexandria that later traditions credited with the Septuagint translation of the "Pentateuch" into Greek. the first facts is literary dependence of Gen. 1-11 on Berossus' "Babyloniaca" (278 BCE) and of the Exodus tale on Manetho's "Aegyptiaca" (c. 285-280 BCE), and the geo-political info inside the desk of countries. a few symptoms element to a provenance of Alexandria, Egypt for no less than a few parts of the "Pentateuch". That the "Pentateuch", using literary assets came upon on the nice Library of Alexandria, was once composed at nearly an identical date because the Septuagint translation, presents compelling proof for a few point of communique and collaboration among the authors of the "Pentateuch" and the Septuagint students at Alexandria's Museum. The overdue date of the "Pentateuch", as confirmed via literary dependence on Berossus and Manetho, has vital outcomes: the definitive overthrow of the chronological framework of the "Documentary Hypothesis", and a past due, third century BCE date for significant parts of the Hebrew Bible, which express literary dependence at the "Pentateuch".

Directed towards a synthesis of the background of the faith of Israel, the essays during this quantity deal with key elements of Israelite spiritual improvement. Frank Moore go lines the continuities among early Israelite faith and the Caananite tradition from which it emerged, explores the stress among the mythic and the ancient in Israel's non secular expression, and examines the reemergence of Caananite mythic fabric within the apocalypticism of early Christianity and the lifeless Sea Scrolls.

In transparent and lucid prose Evoking Scripture explores the literary and theological frameworks that lie in the back of a few of the quotations from and allusions to the outdated testomony within the New. Steve Moyise takes a sequence of case stories from Mark, Romans, Galatians, 1 Peter and Revelation to elevate key questions on the author's hermeneutical stance in addition to the tools and assumptions of these who learn them.

This observation on Greek Jeremiah is predicated on what's most probably the easiest entire manuscript, particularly Codex Vaticanus. the unique textual content is gifted uncorrected and the paragraphs of the manuscript itself are applied. the interpretation into English on dealing with pages is intentionally literal so that it will provide the fashionable reader a touch of the influence the Greek translation may have made on an old reader.

In historical Hebrew Periodization and the Language of the ebook of Jeremiah, Aaron Hornkohl defends the diachronic method of Biblical Hebrew and the linguistic courting of biblical texts. making use of the traditional methodologies to the Masoretic model of the biblical e-book of Jeremiah, he seeks to this point the paintings at the foundation of its linguistic profile, settling on that, notwithstanding composite, Jeremiah is probably going a manufactured from the transitional time among the 1st and moment Temple classes.

Extra info for Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus: Hellenistic Histories and the Date of the Pentateuch (The Library of Hebrew Bible Old Testament Studies)

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Nevertheless, a story set in the past, even dealing with figures known or believed to have been historical, is not the same as a history, and the literary and theological elements of even 1 and 2 Kings and Ezra-Nehemiah caution us that these works cannot be assumed to be historically accurate throughout. See, generally, R. Whybray, The Making of the Pentateuch: A Methodological Study (JSOTSup 53; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987), 20131, on the history of post-Wellhausian criticisms of the Documentary Hypothesis and alternative theories of the development of the Pentateuch.

90. Redford, Egypt, Canaan and Israel, 305. 20 Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus preconceptions of terminus a quo and ad quern, when other periods not considered might provide equally good or better parallels. Van Seters, for instance, arbitrarily took the historiographical data to indicate a date of composition of the sixth century BCE. As Lemche pointed out, the historiographical data equally or better fit the Hellenistic period. Redford admirably considered data from all Egyptological periods and found the Joseph and Exodus stories to correlate with Saite, Persian and Ptolemaic data.

180 BCE); to Ezra even later. Given the lack of objective external evidence for the antiquity of either Kings or Ezra-Nehemiah, the heavy reliance on these books in constructing the history of the development of the Pentateuch appears methodologically unsound. Doubts about the historicity of Josiah's reforms as reported in 2 Kgs 22-23 were eloquently expressed by P. R. Davies in 1992: 15. , 26, 487. 16. , 404-5, 496. 17. See B. Wacholder, Eiipolemus: A Study of Judaeo-Greek Literature (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College, 1974), 94, on the date of Demetrius's book.